The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 98: Troll Bridge/A Collegiate Casting Out. . . (What's It All About?)

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

[THE AUDIO IS SO BAD I AM SO SORRY THERE WERE VERY TECHNICAL VERY PROBLEMS ARGH - F]The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, “Troll Bridge” and “A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices”. Bridges! Bureaucracy! B…existential crisis?Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:https://wt.social/ Dragonfly mission I think we missed a magpie rhyme when doing Carpe Jugulum. Courtesy of John Finnemore. : r/TTSMYF After the King - Tolkien Gateway Terry Pratchett - Tolkien Gateway TROLL BRIDGE | The Moving Picture - YoutubeWhat is the origin of the folklore that trolls live under bridges? - r/AskHistoriansTrolls: From Scandinavia to Dam Dolls, Tolkien, and Harry Potter - AmazonAarne-Thompson-Uther Classification of Folk Tales ‘Who remembers proper binmen?’ - The Guardianxkcd: Atheists Albert Sloman - Wikipedia Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

I can identify both of our lives through wavelength. So that's nice. Oh, that's quite cute. I did find it funny when the internet was vaguely in a phase of saying anyone who's a dog person rather than a cat person, it's because you like to be able to control other beings. Yeah. And like, you didn't understand consent properly.

Oh, fucking consent, mate. Fucking consent. Did you ask consent before you made food, Joanna? Did you ask about allergies? Did you know that making your neighbors chilly and introducing yourself to them where they play the food is the same thing, more or less, as grabbing a disabled person's wheelchair? I cannot believe that. The internet is an incredible place. I mean, the thing is, right? If someone cooked me food that like,

I didn't really know, I probably wouldn't eat it. Really? Depending on what it will if it was like chilly or something. I mean, if it's like cookies or something, it's not so bad. Like, I don't know what's take their kitchens in. And also, I'm just such a weird control freak about food that I need to have like, chosen to eat something less of them for doing it. Like, yeah, I would think it's a really lovely gesture. And I would say

thank you and take it the first time and then kind of politely say like, that is really nice. Please don't do it for me again because of my issues. Yeah. Listeners who aren't as terminally online as us, the death throws of Twitter have produced a beautiful example of twisting something very innocuous into everybody's own personal problems. And then because they don't like to admit that this is about their personal problems, trying to make it into a moral

issue. Because nobody can just admit that they don't like something. It has to be for a good reason. And so there was a lady who cooked her neighbor's chili. And that the internet didn't like that, because she did it without asking them fast, I guess. Yeah, the word consent came up a lot cooking for someone without their consent. Yeah. So I'm not going to have a take on Twitter, because I'm

going to pretend to be cool and aloof about things. But you guys, you know, the few hundred people who listen to this can all have my take on it, which is, I think anybody who thinks it's ethically wrong to take food to your neighbors, you know, is a way to introduce yourself. I don't want to talk to you. That's just embarrassing take to have. Anyway, so talking Twitter, that's on its way out, I guess. Maybe I don't know, I don't really understand the technical stuff

behind it. But it sounds like that's kind of a sinking ship or a, you know, a ship that's lost a good deal of its important part. I don't know much about sailing either. It's not a great metaphor. Well, I could have gone somewhere else with this. I didn't need to take this analogy. It's so weird watching Twitter's death throws on Twitter, because there's nowhere else like it that you could watch

something like that. Like, I know people are moving to Mastodon and co-host, and I might give Mastodon a try, I'll probably set something up for the podcast, because I'm pretty sure there's a Discworld server. I've done, I've subscribed to the Discworld server or whatever the fuck that thing is, I've already forgotten the name of who set up by the Wikipedia guy. I'll link to it in the show notes. But I don't think anything I'll ever really managed to do what

Twitter did and be such an incredible collective place. I just can't imagine another space to watch something like, like this was Canal thing, like Boris Johnson resigning, wireless trust losing to a lettuce. I'll also miss it for the opportunities for a professional like connection, like it's going to be a lot harder to promote my book without Twitter, it's going to be harder to just find out about game jobs and things because like, last few things, I

mainly haven't got much, but the last few things I've applied for all of them I found out about through Twitter because I just follow lots of people. And I don't think I'll have the same success at following interesting people on say LinkedIn. That's true. I think maybe the rise of the newsletter maybe. Yeah, I've signed up to a lot of sub stacks and I think I'm going to start one. So keep an eye out for that listeners.

Yeah, so we went outside. We did we went to the quite long way. We went to all the way to London, which is all the way to London town. We went to that London. They had buildings over three stories. They did. They did.

They did. I saw it. They had trains that went underground. Trains. Trains. I haven't really been to a proper city since for pandemic times. I'm not going to try and do the accent. I'm just I'm not really sure what accent I'm doing. Just murmurs that I suppose. But anyway, yes, we went to London for a book launch.

We did. We went to a fancy book launch for Mark Burrow's shiny new book, London Boys. It's about David Bowie and Mark Bowlin. And we mention it largely because Mark Burrow's is also the also of the Magic of Fairfax. And what Rob Wilkins was going to be there, but wasn't. I was just about to say he was, but he wasn't.

I remember that. I would remember that. He would have remembered meeting Rob Wilkins. No, unfortunately, he couldn't make it. But we met lots and we met and saw lots of interesting people. Phil Lancaster from David Bowie's one of his really early vans, the lower third. I didn't actually speak to anybody because I was very overwhelmed without being in a place that wasn't familiar to me for the first time

in quite a long time. As on most occasions, I get to tell you places quite a lot for work, but it's something different when you've not got a task on hand. I was going to say, if you'd had a clipboard in the Hivers jacket, you would have been fine. I did in the car. I could have brought it with me. I spoke to strangers in the smoking area, which is the only way I know how to make friends. But it was a very good night.

We had lots of fun and I'm only a couple of chapters in, but it's a very good book. Yeah, it is. I like the paper. Is that weird? No, that's totally normal. Yeah, I'm not sure what I like about different types of book paper, but I like I think I like the ones that are a bit more textured, you know? Yeah, I know what you mean. Like, I really like deckled edges on a book, you know, where they're all funky.

Yeah. Also, listeners, if you get the book, you will spot familiar names in the acknowledgments or a familiar name and a familiar misspelled name. But yes, so, so do I know. So, so. I'm worried about my way, but I'm sorry. That's right. I can't start listening up, right?

OK, that's it. That's where I'm being. Now it looks normal. OK, I'm going to turn you up a bit on my end. You sound a bit quiet to me, but I did have you turned out a bit. So. Cool. OK. Right. I'm going to make a podcast. Yeah. Hello and welcome to the Three Shall Make Ye Fret, a podcast in which we are

usually reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one us time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And I don't remember the last time we were doing one of this one, but chronological order, even though I know it wasn't that long ago. It was literally last month, Francine. The last hero is part of the chronology.

Cool. But this week, we're not in the chronology. We're talking short stories. We've veered madly from the timeline. We've veered very madly from the timeline. Today, we are talking about two stories from the eblink of the screen collection. I sort of suddenly, you know, you start saying something and then halfway through the sentence, you think, is that what the white words are meant to be saying? And I suddenly thought I'd got completely the wrong thing.

Two stories from a blink of the screen, Troll Bridge and a very short silly one called A Collegiate Casting Out of Devilish Devices, which I have written in multiple places across the plans because otherwise I'll forget what it's called. Yes. Yes. What did what what have we shortened that to and the drive folder? C-C-O-O-D-D. Yeah, random letters, as far as I can tell.

It looks like some kind of very strange emoji where someone's got a bit of wonky eye going on. Eldritch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Night on spoilers before we crack on. We are a spoiler-like podcast. Obviously, spoilers for these two short stories, I guess. But we will avoid spoiling any future events beyond The Last Hero in the

Discworld series, and we will avoid we are saving any and all discussion of the Shepherd's Crown until we get there. So you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Riding through a cold, cold winter on a talking horse. Exactly. It was amazingly not very annoying. I am a big fan of talking horse compared to talking sword. Yeah. In the rankings. Yeah. Talking things that shouldn't.

Horses fairly up there, I'd say. Yeah. And follow up. Have we got things to follow up on, Francine? You've got you've got things. Yeah, I've got loads of things. I've just picked out a couple of the ones that I'm sure we haven't talked about yet. I'm very sorry if we missed any of your fun things, listeners. But.

That's just I think we warned you about that and start to be honest. Mm hmm. So, Alex, who is a space scientist and a fellow Rincewind fan, wrote the lovely email concerning The Last Hero. I won't read all of it because there's some mention of late books, but they kindly supplied an excellent biominicry example. If you recall in The Last Hero, I was talking about how much I liked the fish and the bird. Oh, yeah.

Biominicry stuff. And they say, and it's not Francine's question about favorite examples of biominicry. I'm not entirely sure this counts, but I thought about the upcoming Dragonfly mission to Titan. And of course, I did, which is basically a helicopter. It actually has eight rotors, which I think makes it an octocop. Oh, shit.

Octocopter, octocopter. Nice. Octocopter. Well, actually, I. Octocop. Because it's. Isn't it? No, do not. I'm not going to troubleshoot this etymology halfway through.

But helicopter watch pass for this email. There we go. The. Titan. And I'm very excited about it. It doesn't look much like a dragonfly, sadly, but then I was trying to figure out if helicopters are actually based on maple keys or if I made that up, but got distracted because I found the CBC article about tiny little

atmospheric monitors modeled on maple keys, which is pretty cool. This paragraph should give you an idea of how far we might be. Each day is going before this email gets too long. So I guess they never got to the bottom of that. There are some pictures of Penny, the bearded dragon, I'm sitting, examining some dragons, and I will. And I'm seeming Alex, OK, with this post from those images, like the mention it's a delight.

Alex is the same person who emailed us about Mars time, I believe. That's it. That's it. I knew we'd heard from them before. Our resident space person. Yeah. Why not? We need to analyze. Alex, please join the subreddit so we can give you an official title. We also have a mac behind rhyme that we missed.

Oh, excuse me, because it's very good, which pierced TV. Put on our subreddit. And it's curcie of John Fennimore. And it goes like this. The first couple of verses are the normal stanzas. Seven for a secret, never to be told. Eight for a wish, nine for a kiss, ten for a chance, you must not miss. Eleven for a wasp, twelve for a bee, thirteen for a coffee, fourteen for a tea.

Fifteen for a pencil, sixteen for a pen, seventeen to hear these options once again. Eighteen for pepper, nineteen for salt, twenty for an accident in which you were not at fault. Twenty one for Jerry, twenty two for Tom, twenty three. Where are all these magpies coming from? Twenty five? No, seriously, thirty. This is weird. Forty eight from where have all these magpies suddenly appeared? Sixty two, stop counting. Seventy, just run.

Nineteen, ninety nine, the revolution of the magpies has begun. Two hundred, no more sorrows, five hundred, no more fears. One thousand for how long the empire of the magpies will last in you. Incredible, isn't it? That's wonderful. I'm very glad that was that was posted there. Thank you ever so much, PD. And finally, we have a written report from from Craig McCullough, who attended an evening with Rob Wilkins,

who was speaking about his new book, A Life of Footnotes, the biography of Terry Pratchett, which we mentioned many times. This was in Edinburgh on the 3rd of November. And obviously, I'm not going to read out an entire report because Joanna will just go away. Soles. But there are a couple of new bits of information in there, which I found particularly interesting.

Apparently Colin Smyth still uses a dot matrix printer to produce his invoices. Incredible. Yeah. Terry described the difference between word perfect is preferred and Microsoft word as being the same as a banana and a triangle. I've never used word perfect. I've never used word perfect, but what a nice analogy. Yes, I think so, too.

And they were very, very disappointed at the watch, although Rob did go on to explain that Richard Dorn is an actual N.I. Northern Irish, I guess. Yeah. Accident of Vimes was inspired. If only he wasn't directed to perform him as a Northern Irish Popeye. That's a good description. Something like that. One question from the audience that was noted as never been asked before

and it was around Terry's politics. Simply put, Terry felt it was every person's duty to hate the government, whatever party the government represented. Marvelous, I love that. Which I agree with. Yeah. Yep. They can hate some more than most. So that's all the follow up I dug out.

I don't know if it's better or anything, but let's talk about some short stories then. Yeah. So Trollbridge. Trollbridge. Francine, do you want to introduce us to Trollbridge? Sure. Trollbridge was published in 1992 as part of After the King, Stories in Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien, which was an anthology of many authors, to celebrate the centenary of J.R.R. Tolkien there. And it appears here in, you know, the one we've been talking about.

A blank of the screen. A blank of the screen. See, at least I tried it. There we go. Well, I was about to say slip of the keyboard because I've taken some extracts from that to talk about in a while. Yeah, that's better. So do you want to summarize it?

Yeah, I might as well. Went too long. It's quite nice to write these summaries rather than the usual ones. Yeah, yeah. You get a beginning, a middle and an end. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Anyway, in this short story, it's bloody freezing in it. Cohen and his talking horse are off to face a troll.

There's a little bit of sneaking and a loss of fanboying as the troll under the bridge introduces Cohen to his family. Micah's honoured to die at the hand of a legend, but Beryl's not best pleased. Cohen admits money was more on his mind than murder. And after finding out Micah's somewhat lacking in the treasure department, they reminisce about how things used to be. Cohen leaves his last few dollars with the troll for the sake of the way things should be and sets off to track down some trollish in-laws.

It's still a bit nippy. People tell stories about heroes. Oh, very nice. Did you find any helicopters? So I've divided. So loincloth watch will take place in the first half of this episode, and I'll save helicopter watch for the second half. Right. On loincloths, we have, of course, Cohen's tiny leather kilt.

Lovely. But he's definitely a loincloth. Yes, but I did for a second, imagined him in like a very, very short little pleated thing. OK, it might be that. Maybe I was just about to look because I can't remember how many Cohen appearances have we had by 1992. We have not yet hit interesting times. It was in two years.

So we've only yet seen Cohen in the first couple of weeks. Yeah, I was second book, I guess. Yeah, I was kind of speculating about where this is in the timeline, especially because he's skin. And I like this as pre-interesting times, Cohen, because it's sort of like this is what's inspired him to go and form the silver hoard. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I say second, third, the fourth listeners before he correct me.

I mean, second and fifth books, but second and third written books. Yes. Right. Quotes. Quotes. Quotes. It was too cold to snow. In weather like this, wolves came down into villages, trees in the heart of the forest exploded when they froze. In weather like this, right.

Thinking people were indoors in front of the fire, telling stories about. I don't say to run a picking quotes out of these very short stories. And that's why I've gone for a single line quotes for this episode. My favorite, I mean, my favorite line from this one anyway was the red glow was as cold as the slopes of hell. What were they talking about? The sunset and sunrise, the the sky, the sky, the sky was going red. So I assume it was either a sunset or a sunrise.

Well, one would hope either way. Shepherds felt some kind of way about it as did sailors. Cool characters, then. Not many. You got Cohen. We've got Cohen, one of our favorites. I said, it's quite nice seeing this as the interim Cohen before he gets all silver hoard and excited again. So this is almost like midlife crisis, Cohen.

If he can have a midlife crisis at 102. Well, he goes on for a fair bit after this. This is true. This is true. But I like, you know, it carries on with the legend in his own lifetime thing. Micah's talking about his dad talking about Cohen when he was just a pebble and remembered as he bestowed the world like a clausus. Yeah, a clausus that's done for a clausus. Yeah. So I really wanted to get that quote right.

And I had to tell Google Docs to stop correcting it a couple of times. But yes, it's nice to see Cohen in this situation, I think. And then we've got the lovely talking horse, who I believe doesn't have a name. Not that I saw, no. No. But he's also old. He's also described as like a shrink wrapped toast rack. Beautiful stuff. Excellent description. And as we said, not annoying for a talking animal.

I think gaspode still wins for least annoying talking animals so far in the disc world. Yeah. But where does the horse go next to Quoth? Oh, I think it depends on the mood of Quoth. But I might because the horse isn't around for long enough to annoy us. He might be above Quoth. Quoth can get a little bit annoying. That's true. Yeah. I'm a big fan of Quoth.

You know, I love Mia Raven, but he can be a bit of a prick. He is a bit of a prick. But we'll never know if the horse was when given the chance to be. I wonder what happened to the horse, because obviously he's not there by interesting times. He probably died. Oh, now I'm sad. Thanks. I'm sorry.

No, he went and said he started his own silver hoard. He's terrorising wild ponies on the plains. Dominating Shetland's. Yeah. Now, there's a band name. Yeah, you can't have that as an English person, though. No, that's right, sir. We have Mika, Mika, Mika. The lovely troll who's very sweet when he fanboys.

Yeah. I like I like the idea of fanboying a potential nemesis. Yeah, the sort of the guy's got a sword to your throat and it's just like, oh, but this is really cool. Yeah, I'm an important enough to be killed by this guy. Yeah, it's really, it's like, I guess, if I don't know, if a world leader who we actually respected thought we were important enough to assassinate.

Yeah, I'm trying to think of a world leader I respect. Well, that's yeah, that's why I didn't name one, but. Yeah, someone in some position of power thought we were important enough to assassinate, but we didn't hate them. But I still can't think of an example, even if we take it out of politics. If Neil Gaiman thought we were worth assassinating. Yeah, if Neil Gaiman or Rob Wilkins wanted to assassinate us or like David Tennant, I guess.

Yeah, yeah. Don't, yeah, by any small chance any of you are listening. But yeah, if you did, I'd prefer it to someone else assassinating me. Yeah, it's all still pretty low on things I want to happen. It's like the talking animal and sword rankings. Like I would rather be assassinated by Neil Gaiman or Rob Wilkins than like. With a talking horse, then by Boris Johnson with Kring. Exactly.

But they're all still quite low down on the to do this. Yeah, yeah, especially the talking horse. Oh, yes, it was a very kill Kring talking horse close. I mean, if I like, I want to take fuck out of that equation on the basis that. It would either be very Marry kill. Thank you. Bestie horse, Marry close kill Kring. Yeah, I guess it's easier to ignore the spouse.

Exactly. He'd be quite an independent husband, I suppose. Yeah, like he's going off doing his thing with the bone rat. I'm going off doing my thing with the horse. Yeah. And then we get together once a week knowing that Kring is there. Yeah. Yeah. And that's really what matters. Well, we've still got this grudge against this talking sword from three years ago.

Now it is. It's been three years. It's been three years in our personal timeline talking about this in many years in disquels. And there's a barrel who is Mika's spouse. And I think where she wasn't, which is she wasn't, Mika, sorry. Yeah, she's glowering at Cohen. Glowering, is she? She is. Well, I mentioned last week, I quite like the name barrel.

And there's not enough barrels around when we're talking about the sea and little fishes. But there's something about the name barrel that's very synonymous with this kind of particular hen pecking wife. Yeah, I think it's just from that era. It is. That's been wrote about that all the time. Yeah, the wife nags and, you know, I don't know, has flowers in her hair or something. Yeah.

And, you know, I've got a lot of sympathy for barrel. Maybe she thought her life would be different. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I feel like, although we are meant here to be being like, you know, emphasising with Mika, Mika, fuck, which way round is it? Now I'm crossing myself both ways. Mika, OK, like, I know it's a type of rock, but I just don't say types of rock very often.

Now I'm doubting myself, but I'm going to stick to Mika. I guess we'll stick with Mika. It's because Mika's the singer. Yeah, no, that's the thing. That's why I'm saying Mika. Because otherwise I'm going to start singing Rose Kelly. OK. But all the looks would be sad.

Sorry. But, yes, anyway, we're meant to be feeling to Mika here. But also, I think, perhaps quite aware of the fact that Ferrell's in the right. Like, she's got like a bunch of little pebbles and and you bring them up from the ship bridge, not even afford in tweet worms. And it does sound like barrels, brothers and laurels. That barrels, brothers are also ourselves. But yeah, that doesn't mean she should be destined for a life of bridge located poverty.

I mean, I don't want to say we're over overthinking it, but I do think like while barrels in the right, the way she's going about being right is wrong. Yeah. Why? Because I think maybe the nagging and him packing rather than sitting down and having to have trying to have an adult conversation about why things. You sound like some sort of fire on my the asshole. I said, I said I was being overthinking it.

I just think couples need to communicate better. Yeah, that's it. No one ever thought of fucking communicating. Thanks. Read it. Not you. I mean, genuinely, read it here. I think of a million. Like, I've never commented on the asshole post. Yeah, but we all thought it.

We have all thought it. Poor communication makes us all look a bit silly, as it used to say in very big letters behind the bar in one of my old jobs. Well, back at the at the pub, it used to have in huge letters, like behind the specials board, so only the bar staff could say it. Poor communication makes us all look a bit silly. Read it. Yeah, because all the bar staff, including me, were idiots. OK, the bridge, the bridge.

I want to talk about the bridge as a location because I wanted to have a quick look at folklore and trolls under bridges because I wanted to see if it did come from Billy Goat's graph. And I found this really interesting thread in Ask Historians where someone was asking exactly the question I wanted to look at, which was the origins of trolls under bridges and folklore. Speaking of Reddit, but this is a good side of Reddit because everyone's sources things.

Yeah, it's great. So the top commenter is someone who has literally written a book on this and I've linked to the full thread below, rather than reading out this whole massive Reddit comment. But the word troll, like its concepts, came into the English speaking world in 1859 with a translation of Norwegian oral tradition. This included the story of three Billy Goats graph,

which featured a troll under the bridge, introducing that motif into the popular English speaking lexicon. This commenter in particular is Ronald James, who wrote the book Trolls from Scandinavia to Damdolls, Tolkien and Harry Potter, which is itself partly a translation of a dissertation written in 1936 in German about the origins of trolls in folklore. So I'm going to get a copy of that. Yes, you are.

Did you look at that in your folklore index? What's it? In the ATU, no, I didn't actually think to look it up in that one. I should have done. Well, we'll have a little look and link what we find. Yes. But someone else in that same Reddit thread also mentioned that there's a longer running folklore tradition in both English and Scandinavian and lots of other cultures,

a sort of cultural uneasiness about the dangers of crossing water and some implications that maybe that's partly where the troll thing comes from, like bridges are dangerous places. Yeah. Which if you think of them as also something transitional, that brings you into me shoehorning the liminal into another fucking podcast episode, to be honest. You can also think of them as things that might fall and let you fall into a river.

Well, also that I think there's a lot of practical implications being bit scared of bridges, especially when you're just getting to learn how to build them. Exactly. But yeah, and then we can look back at the gnarly lands at the bridge and it looks different depending on how you feel about it. Exactly. And the whole thing that various vampire and witch myths about not being able to cross running water. Yeah. Yeah.

But I like how the trolls in bridges is developed in Discworld to be you have this trolling underbridge, but a lot of them just have a sort of toll troll working on them. Yeah. It's also quite a nice detail in those Kim Harrison books I mentioned before, which is sort of urban fantasy series where lots of different fantasy creatures exist in a normal modern day since Natty. And there are trolls in it who are sort of these creatures that have symbiotic relationships with rivers and different kinds of stone.

OK. And are therefore generally found under bridges. And then police are quite often sent to get them out from under bridges because they slowly erode the foundations. It's just a really nice, well-built detail. I like that. We've been playing Valheim recently. Yeah. And there are trolls in that as well, which don't really tie into this, apart from the fact that Scandinavian trolls, but I would like to mention

because I built a bad troll pit that caught me and the troll in it at once. And if you're going to do that, if you're going to build a trap, it's very important that there's not to fall in there before the thing you're trying to trap that. I'm not going to go into what's been happening with me in Valheim recently, but suffice to say I fucked up again yesterday. Oh, no. And then the rule of three, you mentioned the rule of three. That ties into the folklore thing, actually, because the Billy Goats craft

that we had as a kid obviously has the rule of three in it. I don't know if the original was, but probably was the three Billy Goats craft. And that the three goats and three parts for the story and the third one wins that, you know, that's how stories go. The three brothers, three, what's it? And this one, I like that it's kind of just twisted at the end there and it's three brothers in law that he's off to defeat now. That's a really nice detail.

But yeah, so. You're the probably say, listen, as we're kind of doing a talking points rather than little bits, we like talking points. These are short, short stories. Yeah. There's only so much content we can get out of 20 pages. Yeah. So your main thing you want to talk about was angry nostalgia. I think it's interesting to look at this story in context in contrast to the last hero, because obviously, A, we've just covered it and B,

they're two very different sides to the same Cohen. Good. Well done. All right, let's end. We're done. Thank you very much for listening to this episode of The True Shell, my key fret. No, I haven't scrolled down to the outro notes. OK. Right. Yeah. But this idea of this kind of angry nostalgia is something we were talking about kind of a bit the other day.

There was a really interesting Guardian long read about those Facebook nostalgia groups, like the. Oh, that was fantastic. Yeah, I'm so glad you sent that to me. Yeah, I've linked it in the show notes and it's the headline is something like what happened to who remembers proper bin men? Yeah. Yeah. And if you've seen those groups, listeners, you will know it by just that sentence and you'll know what we're talking about. But it's fantastic article and we'll explain it if you don't.

Yeah. And we played on playgrounds and there were no health and safety rules and we didn't die. It was better when it was worse. Yeah. Yeah. It was better when it was worse. And Cohen's not quite saying it was better when it was worse, but he was saying it was better when it was, I guess, less. He's looking at these wide open spaces. And he's it's, you know, I remember when this was all open and now it's all farms. Yeah. It's this kind of anger at things building up.

Even though that was kind of what they all knew they were going towards and even actively working towards impact places. Well, yeah, because they're fighting wars in places to clear out and opposing sides so they can build some farms and people can settle down and stop fighting wars. Yeah. And Cohen's clearing out monsters from here. They're in the other place and perhaps didn't think about it. They must have known that that means that that's now this accursed temple is now prime real estate. Exactly.

Once you've got rid of the eldritch beings, you might as well move in a family of four. Exactly. But then you get this sort of really small version of it with this crumbling bridge that the troll is still determinedly trying to live under because you've got to have trolls under bridges. Otherwise, what's it all about? Yes, another one of those wonderful

sentences that mean absolutely nothing. So Pratchett likes to pick up occasionally. What's it all about when you get right down to it? It's one that let you see Twitter a lot like bad dating profile things. Or it's like, oh, I hate small talk. Give me big talk only. I don't want to talk about the weather. I want to talk about your hopes and fears and all I can picture is someone just starting every conversation with what's it all about when you get right down to it?

Like, I can't think of anything worse. I want to talk about the weather. It's fine. I mean, it's not fine. It's been raining a lot. Yeah, no. I've I've seen this debate come back on Twitter recently. And frankly, do you know what I'm going to ex-KCD and say?

The important thing is I've found a way to feel superior to both. I think everyone sounds intolerable. Yeah, that's a respect for people who love small talk, who hate small talk, to talk like fucking people, speaking of somebody bad at that. Sentences, lads, let's use sentences. Yeah, so to compare the two different coins in this story, you have Cohen, who is he's still discovering that the world has changed. So this anger is very fresh, the fact that it's farms everywhere,

the fact that he's had to travel so far to find a troll under a bridge because all the trolls aren't living under bridges anymore. They're working toll booths on top of them. He's not so much motivated by anger as he's motivated by the determined nation to seek out the last edges of the world that he remembers. And then you move forward to the last hero and anger is his primary motivation. He's angry at his own story fading. He has almost become the troll under the bridge,

but set out to do something about it rather than waiting for Barbarian to turn up and drop $9 in his lap. Yeah, it's not a perfect analogy. Yeah, he's kind of realized it's all over for the last hero, hasn't he? Yeah, he's done his searching. He's like, right, no, if I'm just going to go out of the fucking dying, then I. Yeah, he's run out of worlds to conquer because the farmers and the sensible two up two downs in the old, old rich temples

have kind of done it for him. That's it. No fun to no fun to conquer farmers. No, they don't need. If you went full Genghis Khan, of course, you just go conquer all the civilized places, but he's really not up for Mathematica or citizens. No, I mean, he did go and do the Agathean Empire a bit, but that would seem like fairly chill as far as conquering goes.

Yeah, yeah, definitely compared to Genghis Khan. Yeah, it's a low bar again, very low bar here. Genghis Khan with the talking sword versus Boris Johnson with the talking horse. No. I feel like we need to work on this metric. Yes. Anyway, speaking of the fact that it's all farms and everything's too close and it was pushed off to the edges before. Hmm.

So the intro to this story and the what we're reading, the length of the screen. Yeah. Has a rather wonderful line in itself, which is, you fight a war to change the world and it changes into a world with no place in it for you, the fighter. Those who fight for the bright future and not always by nature, well-fitted to live in it,

which is a beautiful summary of how Kern's feeling, I guess, and the problem is feeling and it ties in with the fact that this is meant to be about Tolkien, I think. But Pratchett wrote a lot about Tolkien and spoke a lot about him because obviously it's the students talking with huge influence on Pratchett. I was speaking before about how he wrote a letter to Tolkien and talking right back like by the next post, which is just fucking incredible. And in Roots of Fantasy, which is one of the chapters

in a slip of the keyboard, which is his collection, nonfiction. And he meant which was written in 1989, actually, so this is for this day. Yeah. So there is a dark side. Take the Lord of the Rings, which for many of my generation was the first fantasy book they read. My adult mind says that the really interesting bit of Lord of the Rings must be what happened afterwards.

The troubles of a war-ravaged continent, the martial aid scheme for Mordor, the shift in political power, the democratization of Minas Tirith. Well, that could be a funny fantasy or a satire, but not a straight fantasy because it's too close to our reality. What we want are heroes and solutions and yes, singing elves. And Cohen is a character of a straight fantasy who Pratchett is kind of dancing around the last edges of straight fantasy that are on Discworld.

And I think we talked a long time ago about how Discworld is kind of a very raw and outburst of this trope that the magic is appearing in the world. Yeah, but done in this very interesting way. And then I found I kept looking through all the stuff. Pratchett is by the way, Pratchett is one of the authors that has his own page in the Lord of the Rings wiki, which is always fun. Yeah. A little later in 1999, he was writing about

how the English had an obsession with gardens, had an interest in sensing things in and how Tolkien kind of burst out of that mould for fantasy. So a lot of British fantasy is stuck contained within the real world. So I think Rivers of London as an example, obviously not the example he was referencing. And then Tolkien kind of the first to make this new world, this new world.

It's all edges. We don't know any of it. It's not safe. It's uncontained. It's a cool, fancy world. And I feel like Pratchett's fairy and that concept. Yeah. I also think he got to explore that properly in the Long Earth series.

Yeah, very much so. Without getting spoilery includes like a whole bunch of new frontiers. Yes, so many. And I'm very into this as well. I love the idea of being explored. I love the idea of. Who knows what's over that hill? It's not something I feel.

Upset about in the manner of maybe Cohen would. Because I don't feel like that's sad about the fact I don't get to go explore a jungle because, you know, that's the only. You'd die. I would die. I would die. Yeah, I love you. But you would die.

So would I. I think Pratchett kind of expanded this interest into space as well. He didn't write a lot of sci-fi, but he had a personal interest in space and loved, loved looking out at this, you know, organic sort of realm. Yeah. Yeah. And I know I haven't really talked about talking a lot in this one. That ending to sorry, spoilers for Lord of the Rings,

but that ending to Lord of the Rings of Frodo needing to take himself away from it is one of my favorite things about the book. It's very sad. It's heartbreaking, but it's also completely believable and understandable. And it's also why, you know, I always kind of mean about cutting the scouring of the shire out of the films, because I think that's an important part of it. Yeah, they have to go after saving the big whole world. They've got to go and save their personal little world as well.

Yeah. And there's echoes of that here, isn't there? The idea of the forest being cut down to some sort of, which also talks about Lord of the Rings with the end forest, of course. Yeah. And the the the now evil alongside the big evil. Yeah, the industrial evil. Yeah, that's not really evil. It's not malevolent. It's just happening.

Yeah. It's cold and uncaring. Yeah. It's almost cosmic horror, isn't it? Yeah. If you think about it too much, then it gets very terrifying. Awesome. Also, I won't keep talking about what Pratchett said about 14 because it's too much, but it doesn't really connect well. However, however, I do have a little bit of bonus Pratchett slagging or phallus and wandland, which I found while I was looking stuff about this.

So this was an interview in tech in SFX, sorry, which is now published on gamebraid.com that he was voted SFX readers favorite author, Pratchett, in 2008. And that meant, of course, he had overtaken J.R.R. Tolkien or a beaten J.R.R. Tolkien in this. And SFX asked him, why do you feel uncomfortable with being ahead of Tolkien? Pratchett, I think Tolkien will be around the 100 years time,

but I'm not certain that I will. Really? It's surprising to hear you say that. Well, actually, 100 years is quite a long time, I think. The Lord of the Rings is at a point where it will keep going by sheer momentum almost forever. Have you ever wondered why a piece of crap like Alice in Wonderland is still in print? It really is the most awful book, and I think it keeps going

because there's some kind of momentum that keeps it trundling on. Does anyone ever read Alice in Wonderland these days? Really, really read it. Somehow society decides that some titles are in print, even though they're pretty awful, and nobody reads them anymore. I'm sorry, but I hated the book. I thought it was godawful, creepy Victorian humour. The Lord of the Rings is superb, though.

I love that. That makes me so happy. There's such a fucking tangent. This also now explains a lot of Susan's reaction to meeting the bonerot, and you're not going to say, oh my, the paws and whiskers are in your dick head. I don't know what to say. This is something I really did enjoy. I liked Through the Looking Glass more than Alice in Wonderland, but Through the Looking Glass isn't any better in any of those respects.

I fully agree with him while enjoying those books, though. Yeah, that's fair. It is creepy Victorian humour, at least. I don't think we can end our Trollbridge discussion on anything further away from Trollbridge, and I like it that way. Yeah. Not that I don't really enjoy Trollbridge as a story, I just like how far off Beast we've managed to go

that we've got to bitching about Alice in Wonderland. That is explorers finding the new edges. There we go. There we go. Well done. And of course, I've got one. I'll bring it back. I should mention the quote I picked at the beginning was also echoed right at the end, which is lovely.

It's like, he fairy-tailed it. He's nicely fairy-tailed it. He's got the repeated phrases. He's got more. Yes, good effort. Well done, Prachi. He's got the, are you sitting comfortably, children, with the little praising about them

and tell stories about heroes and stuff. Yes. It's quite a good writer, this bloke, isn't it? That's not C.S. Lewis. No, not C.S. Lewis. Shit. I mean, yes. Lewis Carroll.

Lewis Carroll. Sorry. Sorry, C.S. Lewis's memory. Yeah. I would say Prachi, I enjoy Prachi. I know, but I wouldn't just go on about that randomly. Welcome to the True Show, make you fret her podcast

where we randomly bitch about C.S. Lewis. Yes, we get it. The lion was Jesus. Well done. Fucking analogies. He's got all the goreys. All the goreys. No, sorry.

I'm sorry. That was bad. I'm cutting that out. I'm cutting that out. I'm going to put myself in jail for a minute. A collegiate casting out of devilish devices, then. Yeah. Yes.

It's a later short story. It is. It is 2005, was it? Yeah. So, we have, I don't have an intro for this, the short story about the wizards.

Yeah. It's a fun little slice of life wizards thing. It was published in the Times Higher Education Supplement. A supplement? I don't think I've ever looked at. Nope. Nope. Me neither.

I had a look at the Wikipedia page about it, see if it was interesting in any way to me, and it was not. So, this is a good introduction. Thank you for listening to this. Inspired slightly by the meetings, perhaps you used to have to take when he was chair of the Society of Authors.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I've recently joined. You have. As an associate, not a full member, because I haven't actually published a book yet. Yes. So, to quickly summarize this little story, the wizards council has assembled.

Biscuits are on the horizon, but first, a note from veterinary. The wizards are forced to consider modernizing. They're not happy about it. Publishing papers, actually teaching students, and even ethics are on the table. And as the tea and biscuits approach, the matter is taken under urgent consideration.

Good to hear. So, on helicopter and line cloth watch, this section gets the honor of helicopter, because we don't know what's happened to May Hatt Street. Apparently, there's nothing the matter with it. It's merely temporarily displaced, and should catch up with continuation soon. I've chosen to assume it's been abducted by helicopter.

Sure. Why not? Thank you. Thank you for supporting me in this front scene. I don't support you in this drama. It was a poor effort to carry on. All my efforts today have been poor, so I'll accept it. Perfect.

Also, obviously, we like to keep track of the timeline. This is slightly later in the timeline on the disc than where we currently are, but the century of the fruit bat is officially the last century at this point. Are we not there in the... We're definitely coming out of it. I don't know if we've officially left it.

There haven't been a... Are we kicking and screaming still? Of course. We're with the wizards. When aren't we kicking and screaming? Yeah, yeah, quite right. Until the eldritch beings from the Dungeon Dimensions eat us all.

I hope you've got your half-brekkiness sock. Always. I'll do my quick. Besides, how can you measure thinking? You can count the table the carpenter makes, but what kind of rule could measure the amount of thought necessary to define the essence of table or city? No idea.

Exactly. I quite like that because A, table or city is funny, and B, because of course it is quite a question on how one defines thought's work as a kind of output thing. Not what I intend to go into. Just an interesting question. Mine is a quote from Ridicully. That comment strikes at the very heart

of the bureaucratic principle, Dean, and I shall ignore it. I'm not sure what the bureaucratic principle is, but I should support Ridicully in ignoring the Dean. Be a bureaucratic principle, I think, in this context, being doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff and not for any other purpose. Yep, perfectly.

Perfect. Reasonable. Thank you. I know words. Characters, though. We know the Wizards very well at this point. I always like keeping track of whatever Ponder's current title is.

Currently, he's the prior lector, or the one who gets given the tedious jobs. Yeah, that's a position held in most Oxford and Cambridge currently, but with slightly different responsibilities, and they all do sound very tedious, though. I support it, then. Also, he's the head of Invisibly Applied Magic. Yes, and we very much support the Invisibly Applied Magic

because that got us quite far in the last hero. It did. It did. I would even have called it advisable by the end. Also, there's quite a lot of engineering and explosives that got us out of places. Well, yes, there is that. But there was a little bit of magic sprinkled on it.

God, that's wanky. Yes. Who does wrangle the wrangler? Who does? I just like that of the titles. It's one of the vaguest senior wrangler. And eventually, he's genuinely confronted with, what is it do you do?

No need to be asking that kind of thing. Start asking what Britkali does. And have you done more of it in the past six months than in the previous six? No idea. And of course, we have the writer of these suggestions to the wizards themselves, A.E. Pessimale, who is a character we've not met in the chronology yet,

but a mild spoiler that we will meet and he'll be a delight. I know where and when. Well, we know where and when, but you might not. We won't talk about it. Exactly. But I like to point him up here for those people who've read it before. A.E. Pessimale, a very good bureaucratic name. So I love this story because you know one of my consistent rants

and you share it is that this meeting can be a bit more is that this meeting could have been an email. And the rarer opposite form of this email could have been a meeting. Yes. Or should have been. But that very rarely happens. And so I did say, you know, this story could have been a Klax, which is the discord equivalent, I feel.

But I really like this sort of short story and when authors get to do something like this and play with like just a slice of life with absolutely zero consequences. Yeah. It's a nice little play with characters. And you get lots of fun little moments in it as a result, you know, the poor students and Dean sort of saying,

oh, we just sort of check them where the library is and then graduate the survivors. Yeah, obviously. It does make me worry about how much work the librarian has. I don't think he would do anything he didn't want to. Yes, good point. Yeah, I like slice of life stuff as well. I think the Magnazarkos was like released a couple earlier.

Enjoy your slice of life bits. There's like either bonus bits or in between events. Yeah, it's always nice to know your characters. We're going to have a breather for a minute and you can just enjoy them being without thinking, oh, when's the music going to start? Exactly. And obviously it's fun with something like this

because they're being challenged just enough that there is a point to it. It's not just them sitting and having a conversation, but it's sitting and having a conversation and that challenges exactly who they are and what they do. So you get this competition with them from Brazenek, this other university, and they're publishing proper papers, apparently.

Yeah. Such as the diathematic aspects of cheese in mice. Yeah. And... Di-o... Oh, fuck, I've done a diatomic or something. It's like a two molecule something, something, two acid molecules.

I looked that up and so from that, I deduced that there's bits of magic that have two bits, two pounds, and then... Diads. And then I'll turn cheese into mice or mice into cheese or possibly cheese. Yes, one of those. The cheese and the mice have a symbiotic relationship.

I had a long dead ends on my obscure reference to Neil today, Joanna. I'm sorry. But I enjoy that you have the wizards who refuse to be... The wizards who are usually very competitive refuse to see this as being competitive. They do not see Brazenek as competition and won't consider that one.

Yeah. Which is nice, but you find the levels of their competitiveness. They'll compete with each other. But anyone else outside of them is not worth competing with almost. Well, especially if they then have to compete by doing stuff they don't want to do. Well, exactly. I respect it very much, though.

Compete with each other who can get through the most cheeses on the cheeseboard during the Thursday meeting, of course. That's a competition worth having and keeping track of, meticulously. That's what we track the cheeses. We track the cheeses. God knows.

A chair of indefinite studies is working on his years and years and years. Why would he churn them out? Like some factory wizard. I would say, like, the attention, the quick reversal when it's taking the piss out of snobbery in, especially in academics, the suggestion from Pess and Maul

that they should take at least 40% of students that wouldn't be any good and they're horrified by it. And that's obviously a thing that comes in academics over and over again, trying to bring in more people from marginalized backgrounds. And the wizard's response is, no, that means we'd have 60% that are good. That is far too many.

Jesus. But one of the other suggestions is that they form an ethics committee in case they're doing experiments on mice and things. And the response is, no, it's fine. We just experiment on students. Yeah, absolutely ethical.

What else are you going to do? Part and parcel. So, yeah, so I think this is a really lovely short story, even though it's only a few pages, because what it does is take these wizards, put them in a thing where they're absolutely under no threat whatsoever. Obviously, they solve the problem

presented by the story by saying, we'll take it under urgent consideration and form a committee. But it also sort of answers little questions you may or may not have, like, where's the school structure buggered off to since equal rights and sorcery? Because, obviously, there were lecture halls

and there were Simons and Esks of the world. And there's clearly, and even moving pictures, you had Ponder sitting an actual exam. Yeah. Along with his mate who went off to become a movie star. And it's almost like a mini version of Thief of Time. Like, there are plot holes and it's fine and we don't need answers to them,

but at least now we sort of know what the wizards are up to because they're not bothering with teaching students. Absolutely. So, it makes me happy. And I sort of wish there were more of these, because, obviously, Patrick was very good at editing, even if we realised from Rob's work, he hated it. So, extraneous stuff does get cut.

Yeah. But sometimes it's nice to have it. I wonder if this was kind of lifted wholesale from the scraps by the audience. Yeah, I've got a feeling this was in the pit somewhere and must have been originally part of a later one. Yeah, I'd like to be able to talk about the relevance of this book to the debates of the time and even of now,

but neither of us went to university or know much about academics. In the introduction here, it says, well, they asked Britain, they got to it because at the time, there were some debate around issues to do with government, money being given to universities. University is not being particularly happy about being told what to do by governments.

Fortunately, if you unseen university, they don't have to ask anybody for anything, apart from a little leniency. With the taxes. And, you know, they're asked to pay taxes and don't, and that's all very polite and well done. And occasionally, also, some patience when it comes to the whereabouts of Mayhap Street,

I suppose. Libertation hasn't been turned into a lizard for ages. It has been a while since the patrician was turned into a lizard. We're not entirely sure it was that Nari. When did the patrician get turned into a lizard? Also. Thank you. No, that was veterinary.

That was, I think, possibly the first. He wasn't named as, was he? No, he wasn't named as veterinary, and it was a very different physical description in the first couple of books. But I think by sorcery, he had the name veterinary. All right. Because the two books after sorcery, we have Guards, Guards,

and it's very much veterinary there. Yeah. Because it's veterinary, pre-drum, not with Wendell something, not Wendell Poon. Lupin Once. There we go. Lupin Once. I remember the names of characters from the books

that we've been talking about for many, many years. Lupin Once. Shame on me. Lupin Twice. Well, quite. So, yes, it's a very short, very silly story to talk about. It adds literally nothing to the Discworld canon. We know that the wizards sit around,

have these sorts of meanings, and mostly look forward to the tea and biscuits on the horizon. It meant you want a chocolate biscuit, and I don't have one. Oh, I've got some Lindor chocolates, though. Well, I have some of them, actually, somewhere. What I want is a box of those, like, box biscuits,

the nice ones. Oh, yeah. That's what I want right now. I want a box. I'm going to tomorrow. Have a look on the market, because sometimes they've got those difficult boxes of really nice biscuits.

I want some dark chocolate hobnobs. Right. We've gone off. Have you got an obscure reference for Neil Francine? I do. I do. I've only got the one I'm afraid. How dare you?

I know. I know. I'm sorry. It's the beginning of this story, in fact. The council chamber with its stained glass image of Arch Chancellor Sloeman discovering the special theory of Sludes. It was always nothing more.

Arch Chancellor Sloeman, I thought. Well, first of all, the special theory of Sludes. Sludes, we have, of course, come across before, and it is what comes before life, possibly, maybe. But Sloeman, I looked up just in case, and thank God it is somebody, because I was running out of ideas. Sir Albert Edward Sloeman was the founding

and longest-serving Vice Chancellor at the University of Essex. And now he was quite an unusual academic, because he was basically behind the founding of the University of Essex. Certainly, a lot of the practicalities, a lot of the driving force behind it. He would have been in practice consciousness,

I think it sounds like he would have been in the news quite a lot during his peak activity in academia, I suppose. He was part of the controversy when the University of Essex was the target of about six years of political protest. And he wasn't particularly on the side of wrong, but he also was upholding university rules.

And I think he therefore got attacked by the left down the right, which sounds like somebody practically would sympathise with just order. If everyone's attacking you, you're probably thinking, it's great. Kind of level, and yeah. Interesting, I like that.

Yeah, I think so. And he died in 2012, and the University of Essex library building is now named after him, which makes it quite difficult to Google him in the two minutes before a show. But I'll get around to looking him up. Excellent.

And I think that's all we have to say on these lovely two little short stories. Thank you very much listeners for bearing with us in this weird little month full of delays. I know we talked about doing an episode on unadulterated cat, but a lot of stuff is happening right now, and I don't think we're going to be able to do it.

That doesn't like cats at all. That is not what it says. It's not true, it's not true. So we're going to return with our regularly scheduled programming on the 5th of December, where we will begin discussing the amazing Morris and his educated rodents.

I'm sure we can fit in a few paragraphs about the unadulterated cat in there, although it's relevant. I feel like we'll probably talk about cats quite a bit next month. So until we're back next month, dear listeners, you can follow us on Instagram

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go to patreon.com forward slash the TREESHOWMAKYFRED and you can exchange your hard-earned pennies for all sorts of bonus nonsense. We'll be back at you with a new rabbit hole next week. Oh, we're coming to that, aren't we? Yeah, no, we will. We will. We'll be talking about the next bit of the history of print.

Yay! We're getting up to modern times. Modern times in this economy. And until next month, dear listeners, don't let us detain you. Well, that was an episode of the podcast that we recorded.